New Software, Old Camera, Internet Censorship & More

I’m pleased to announce a new Perl module release to CPAN – JSON::signature-to-image.pl. This is a Perl version of the PHP tool with a similar name by Thomas J Bradley which converts a JSON data string containing a web-user’s hand-written signature on an HTML5 “Canvas” into a standard PNG image file. I needed the ability to do this for work last week and had to spend the better part of a morning trying to grok this and cobble together a solution that would work within our Perl-based system. I love projects like this when I can create a generalized solution to address a problem where no good solution existed before.

I attended the “1st Annual DFW Photo Expo” this Saturday. I was hoping to look at a couple of lenses and possibly score a sensor-cleaning kit, but no joy on either account. There were absolutely no Pentax lenses to be seen anywhere. I did not expect to seen much Pentax stuff at something like this, but still held out some hope, especially since Panasonic and Sony had well-stocked booths in addition to the expected presence of Cannon & Nikon. One positive was that despite almost all the tutorial seminars showing online as being booked up, I had no trouble attending one of them. The seminar was about flash techniques. I only stayed for the one seminar and then left after checking out all the booths. I almost bought a bag, but wasn’t willing to part with $40 for it.

Quote of the Day: “Friend, you cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. And what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can’t give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody. And when half of the people get the idea they don’t have to work because the other half’s going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody’s going to get what I work for. That, dear friend, is about the end of any nation.” – Adrian Rogers

My father in law pulled out this camera which had belonged to his dad to show me while we were visiting them for Thanksgiving dinner. It says “Zeiss Contaflex“, and after doing some research, I determined that is is actually a Zeiss Contaflex II, mid 1950s vintage. I persuaded him to stick some 35mm film into it so I could take it for a quick spin! It had an attachable flash unit that required individual bulbs, for which we had none and it was dark, so I had to experiment with low-light shots. It took me a little while to figure out how to work the meter, which had separate ring controls for dialing in aperture and shutter speeds from those on the lens. You guesstimate the values and adjust until the mechanical meter indicates the proper exposure, then you dial in those values into the lens using the rings on it, then press the shutter release. The viewfinder will then stay black until you mechanically turn the film advance knob as far as it will turn to advance the film, then the viewfinder opens back up. With equipment like this I do not know how anyone ever got any non-posed shots! I only took a few shots and left it with my Father in law to decide whether and when to finish out and develop the roll. Still it was interesting figuring out how to use an old, mechanical camera. Apparently these were popular “consumer” grade 35mm cameras back in the ’50s and Zeiss sold a lot of them.